Fabian Hamilton: “Kim Jong Un is more dangerous than Trump”

Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament, Fabian Hamilton MP has warned that Kim Jong Un is more dangerous than President Trump, as rhetoric escalates on the Korean peninsula. In an interview with the Daily Politics from the Labour Party Conference in Brighton this week, Hamilton said “America has a very robust constitution and it is designed to stop somebody becoming a dictator, if they are elected”.

Hamilton’s comments come as tensions over North Korea’s nuclear programme escalate between the United States and Kim Jong Un. While abhorring Trump’s politics and personality, Hamilton says he does not believe Trump is a bigger threat than North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un as “the people of North Korea are being starved to make way for their nuclear programme, while the United States is several thousand times more powerful”.

While he admits that the situation is worrying, particularly how the United States will choose to deal with the threat from North Korea, Hamilton said North Korea’s nuclear programme is a threat to world peace and dangerously disrupts the status quo.

Hamilton added “Donald Trump is not the dictator of the United States, he’s the President and what he says matters, but he’s part of a complex system of government that is full of bureaucracy, many characters and many cheques and balances, Kim Jong Un doesn’t”.

The Labour Party has been proving its determination to be absolutely consistent on human rights abuses across the world. Hamilton says that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party fully condemn any form of human rights abuses across the world, whether it be in Iran, North Korea or other countries.

While focusing on the North Korean crisis, Hamilton’s role includes human rights abuses and other international crises, such as the current crisis in Myanmar with the conflict between the state and the Rohingya Muslims.

On Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Hamilton said “Jeremy stands up for the oppressed, he always has done and that’s what his government will do”.

Labour are government in waiting, and Hamilton says his role as the Minister for Peace and Disarmament in a Labour government would bring together parts of the Foreign Office with sections of the Ministry of Defence to tackle issues, such as the control of arms exports, particularly where they are being used illegally or being exported to regimes.

Hamilton says Britain needs a much more coherent system of arms exports and that he will be looking at places where conflict may arise, such as in Egypt and Saudi Arabia who have placed sanctions on Qatar, which Hamilton says has the potential to turn into a “hot-war”, but thinks the government should take steps to ensure that does not happen.